The standard repositories for CentOS contain almost no packages that are not in RHEL. In contrast, Scientific Linux adds a number of applications and tools to the 5 series, including dkms, FUSE, icewm and OpenAFS. The Release Notes list the software added and explain some of the other changes.

The Scientific Linux project, which also released its version 6.1 at the end of July, has now caught up with Red Hat. The CentOS project is still working on its clone of RHEL 6.1.